When did you start brewing? What got you brewing? How frequently do you brew?

I’ve been brewing for around 9 years. I got into brewing because of my love of craft beer and I wanted to brew beers that were interesting to me.

Describe your brew system.

With the help of my father and brother, we built a Brutus 10 style system. My father created a unique wort chiller for my system using a radiator and a glycol cooling unit from a printing press.

How did you come up with your brewery’s name?

The name works on many levels. I live in Peculiar and I really enjoy using local, foraged and other unusual ingredients.

What is your favorite style of beer to brew? I tend to brew big beers, usually at least 7% abv. NE IPAs, Stouts, Gruits & Saisons are the majority of brews I’ve been doing.

What was your first beer you ever brewed? Did it turn out?First all-grain was a raspberry ginger wheat run on the brutus 10 we built. Had some production issues, stuck mash, it was a bit of a learning curve. The beer turned out not very good, too much ginger and raspberry, and overall just wasn’t a very well made beer.

Do you have a homebrew disaster you’d like to share?

Last year while out of town on vacation my wife got a call from the house sitter that the house had been broken into, the young lady found broken glass upon entering the front door. Long story short, the glass was from the exploding bottle bombs from a batch of brew I had recently bottled. Half a dozen or so bombers blew up and saturated the carpet much too my wifes delight. Even after all these years of brewing, there is always a first time for everything.

Do you have any homebrew related projects that you’d like to share?

I am always looking for unique local and foraged ingredients to add to beers. Just planted a paw paw orchard for brewing purposes. I am also working on a wild yeast project in the hope to find a local yeast to ferment a entirely Missouri made brew.

Anything unique participants at the festival can expect if they come by your booth?All of my brews have a local slant. I’ll have brews with foraged eastern red cedar limbs and berries, sumac, locally grown boysenberries, local cider, as well as a beer brewed with 100% walnut sap foraged from my yard used in place of the mash water.

Do you have any plans to go pro? When? Where?

I’m currently finishing up a business plan to start a small brewery and then will begin the daunting process of bringing that idea to fruition in the near future. The current plan is to be in Peculiar MO.